


Your Real Mother

by thatsafunnytricktoplayongod



Category: Return of the Jedi - Fandom, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 13:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsafunnytricktoplayongod/pseuds/thatsafunnytricktoplayongod
Summary: Vader overhears the conversation between Luke and Leia about Leia's "real mother." It sends him down a path they cannot follow, memories of Padme.





	Your Real Mother

“Leia... do you remember your mother? Your real mother?”

“Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.”

“What do you remember?”

“Just...images, really. Feelings.”

“Tell me.”

“She was very beautiful. Kind, but...sad. Why are you asking me all this?”

Vader sat back in his chair. The conversation continued, but he had stopped listening. When he had sent robotic spies down to the moon, he’d told himself, told the Admiral it was to learn more about the rebel’s plans. But deep down, deep down he knew it was to learn more about Skywalker. His son.

And his daughter.

He thought back to all the times he had confronted the Princess, all those times he had towered over her the way he had towered over her mother, the way they argued, and the way she spit words like they were bolts from a blaster. Her mother had done that, too, argued like it was written into her very DNA, and perhaps it was.

The Princess remembered her mother. He remembered her mother, but less and less every day and that was what scared him the most, even more than the wrath of the emperor.

“She was very beautiful,” the Princess’s voice echoed again.

He thought back to their wedding day, a small ceremony on her home planet where they had shared their first kiss. When he saw her in that white dress, all done up in lace and pearls, he had thought his heart would stop. His breathing hitched, and Obi-Wan had squeezed his shoulder. Padme drew closer, and Anakin’s hands shook as he reached for hers, warm and soft.

“She was kind.”

He had seen that kindness in her every day. He had seen it in her as she worked herself to the bone to defend the weak, as she pushed and pushed for an end to the war. He had seen it when she listened to every individual who approached her with a problem the Senate was ignoring. She promised to help each one of them, and she tried her damndest to keep that promise. He had seen that kindness and love every time he woke from a nightmare of the battlefield and she comforted him silently in the dark of their bedroom.

“Kind, but… sad.”

His heart sank as he heard those words. Anakin had caught her crying more than once. Crying about the future of the galaxy, what was left of it. Crying about his constant absences, his near death experiences. Vader knew this could only have worsened when the Empire took over. If she had just listened to him, if they had just talked more, things could have ended differently. She could be… here.

Vader sunk into a memory, one he hadn’t recalled in some time. He was seated on a couch in a long-gone penthouse apartment. He was wearing clothes- real fabric, not a leather and metal suit. He stared at his hands, free from black gloves, adorned only with a simple band on one finger. He looked up and into her face, just as beautiful as he always remembered it, only now it was contorted into a frown, and though her mouth was moving her words were muffled.

“...Anakin, are you listening to me?” she said, her voice suddenly coming into focus as though someone had tuned a radio station.

“Hm? Yes. No. What?” She rolled her eyes.

“I was  _ saying,  _ Anakin, that you really shouldn’t trust anything the Jedi tell you. I know they claim to be peacekeepers and the protectors of the galaxy, but you really have to ask yourself how much of this war is really their fault. How much peace have they really kept, when they insist on leading every battle on every planet, sitting in on every war meeting?”

He rose, and crossed the room to where she was leaning against a dresser. He wrapped his arms around her small frame, pressed his face into her hair and breathed in her scent.

“You’re right. You’re always right. Listen, I love you.”

She pushed him off, but when he looked down into her face she was smiling. Oh  _ God _ he missed that smile. He smiled back.

“I’m right? I don’t hear that enough.”

“You’re right, you don’t.” Anakin paused for a minute. “What if we moved away?”

“What?” her smile faded slightly. 

“I mean it. What if we just left? We became, I don’t know, farmers, or florists, or something, anything else. Just far away from here. Far away from this war. I just,” his voice hitched. “I just don’t want to lose you.” 

Her face softened, and she leaned in for a kiss before a voice from behind them interrupted:

“But that’s not what happened. That’s not how this ended.”

Anakin turned to see himself sitting on the couch again. Not himself- Vader. His mask was balanced carefully on the arm of the couch, and it stared at Anakin with a blind furiosity. As he stared back, his double spoke again.

“You listened to her. You stopped trusting the Jedi, and began trusting someone else.” Anakin couldn’t look at Vader’s bare face, burned and scarred, so pale it almost shone. But he couldn’t keep looking at that mask, that awful, piercing mask.

He turned back to Padme, but her eyes were fixated on the mask on the couch, and her face was twisted in revulsion. She looked up into Anakin’s eyes for a second before she dissolved into the air. Anakin reached out to snatch her back, and he saw his hands were covered by the gloves once more. 

He realised he was seated again, but not on the couch, he was back in his chambers. He heard his voice echo through the small room, despite being firmly rooted back in reality:

“But she’s not gone. Look at her children. Her beauty, her kindness, her sadness, all live on in them.”

A light blinked on in the corner of his vision. Vader wearily pressed the button beneath it with a gloved finger.

“Lord Vader, one of the rebels is offering his surrender.”

Vader sat up. His spine started tingling. He  _ knew _ it was Skywalker- no, Luke. His son.

“I will escort him to the Emperor myself.”

“Yes, Lord Vader.” The light turned off and Vader sat back for a moment. He could feel a presence that he had not felt in a long, long time. He could smell her scent again, faintly, through his mask. It was time to go home.


End file.
